Reservations
Barry Long speaking to his meditation group in London, 9 September 1981.
I endeavour to get you to give up the reservations you have about yourself. To give them up, not by searching for some external benefit, but to give them up in love. This also means you’ve got to give up your demands on others. You can’t give up your reservations about yourself and retain them about others. One is the other. As you give up reservations about yourself, so you must give up the emotional demands you make on other people.
Our only restrictions in becoming simple and true are our ideas of what we are. We are indoctrinated with a wrong idea of ourselves. That idea prevents us from getting to the truth of ourselves. Having your heart broken, your aspirations foiled, pain, suffering, injury - all that is a process of living to break down your idea of yourself until you can say ‘I am nothing. I can do nothing. I am finished.’ If you can really say that, then at that moment it’s the end of the person, and you are simple; you are true. All your reservations about yourself are gone.
Love Does Not Demand